3rd May 2020
When the prime minister recently announced that we were only allowed out once a day for exercise, to buy essential shopping or if we were key workers, I had a sense of what it must have felt like to have heard Neville Chamberlain announce the outbreak of war via the radio in September 1939. The current crisis caused by the Covid 19 Corona virus is surely the greatest threat that our country has faced since the Second World War. Now that I am only permitted to go out for exercise once a day I am enjoying my walks much more than I would have done before the current Corona virus epidemic when I could go out whenever I felt like it. I think that better weather helps now that we are in Spring and after the long periods of heavy rain virtually every day during the winter.
When I went for a recent walk with my wife we were looking at all the lovely wild flowers near Meadfoot beach. This reminded me of the school project that everyone in my class was given by the biology teacher at the end of my first year at Torquay Boys Grammar school. That summer whenever I went for a walk with my parents I would pick a selection of wild flowers, press them, paste the them into a folder and then with an ink fountain pen write the name of each flower by each pressed specimen. I was given a book written by Keeble Martin of wild flowers as a present. I was quite good at collecting wild flowers, and I am quite good at collecting lots of things. As well as collecting stamps here is a list of other things I have collected:-
1970s Devon Genral Bus Tickets
Coins
1970 Football World Cup Cards
Brooke Bond Tea Trade Cards
Vinyl Records
Torquay United Football Programmes
Quicksilver Messenger Service Bootleg Recordings
Scanned Photos and Posters of Quicksilver Messenger Service
Science Fiction Magazines